Mr. Eoin Carroll:

Organisations like ours, which are involved with penal reform and conditions of imprisonment, are not best placed to answer questions as to why. That comes down to the courts and sentencing. There is a unique situation in Ireland where the prison authorities have huge powers in terms of back door options. That was detailed in the last committee report. There is the opportunity, after someone has spent a short time in custodial detention because the courts have deemed that appropriate, to consider serving a sentence in the community. It needs to be examined. Unlike the UK, we do not have the sophisticated data to examine why there are increases. There are increasing numbers and we do not yet know why. We can see a reduction in the number of men being imprisoned.